Transmitted live on a Thursday afternoon from 4:30 to 5 pm with a Sunday repeat, the programme told the story of the Home Counties family Mr and Mrs Appleyard and their four children. A reunion programme, "Christmas with the Appleyards", went out at Christmas 1960.[2]

In the show's first year (1952) the episodes were aired live and never recorded, thus no episodes from the 1952 season exist. From 1953, the episodes were telerecorded, but the BBC ended up wiping most of them. Only one episode of the entire run of 68 exists in television archives as of 2009.